


i even changed my name this time

by quentintarrantino



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 18:25:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3299489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quentintarrantino/pseuds/quentintarrantino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He cannot sleep. But still in the fade where he walks he dreams and she's never far from him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i even changed my name this time

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is honestly. I just really wanted to write something for this pairing and I love Solas so much. Expect much better work later pls don't take this seriously.

The only remnant is the silvery light stretched tight across the sky where the breach once was and once every hundred years he finds himself in the ashen remains of Haven, staring up at it. Time moves differently in the fade and he's never quite sure when he's crossed over. Sometimes he likes to believe that she's out there watching it too.

Hiding away was a knife in his chest, especially since his vhenan was never the type to lay down and accept defeat. Her hope was the poison on the blade, that she thought he was brave enough to return to her, that maybe she could bind herself to him and be relieved at the sight of his blood. Anything to prove that he was mortal.

He cannot sleep. But still in the fade where he walks he dreams and she's never far from him. Her voice is warmth in his very soul and if he could have given up what he was for anyone he would have done it for her. To rewind time and give it all back to her, to lovingly stroke aging broken hands through greying hair. To live as they pleased and be fortunate to count themselves free to die. But for all his preaching it was a cruel irony that Solas found himself shackled with chains harder than steel.

He worked tirelessly, mending what he had destroyed, and though he felt her always if he didn’t focus on it the pain wasn’t quite so bad. When he was forced to spend time near mortals he asked after the Inquisition, of the fearless Dalish woman who led with a wolf’s jawbone around her neck and an army behind her. She was immortal in her own right.

/

She doesn’t sleep anymore, dark circles under her eyes to signify that she has given everything to the people who cling so tightly to her legs. Every day she drowned in problems, another battle to fight, more judgement to pass. It was harder when she had been younger, when the wounds were fresh but now it seems she had made peace with all that had come to pass at last.

Her advisors had suggested a marriage to cement the Inquisition’s place in the political sphere of Thedas, something that could help solidify what they had been working to create and she had refused firmly. The ways of the People were foreign to her shemlen friends who were sympathetic but uncomprehending of the bond that had been broken. When he had been with her a piece of his soul was wedged firmly against hers, his very essence so comfortably settled it was impossible to tell them apart, as the aging Flemeth had once said of the goddess she housed inside her aching bones.

She refused to acknowledge it anymore but the tethers of the last pieces of him would still stir when he returned to their realm. She could feel him at night when he walked alone among the trees, lamenting for their fallen civilization like a wolf crying at the moon.

\

The sadness had been tangible, one prolonged note that bled seamlessly into the next moment, stretching on into an infinity so thick with remorse he could taste it on his tongue. He had almost laid down his purpose for her, and still he knew that even if they had all the time in the world for him to explain what he must do it wouldn’t be enough. He had watched in the shadows as the Black City festered like an infected wound in the Fade, thinking of her, the tears that had leaked out of those wide beautiful eyes despite her attempts to sound like she understood. This was war, there was bigger matters to attend to and he hated himself for denying her one fleeting moment of love in such an uncertain world.

Fen’Harel had taken lovers, enough to last seven lifetimes, but he had never offered himself to another like he had for her. A spirit so pure, radiating empathy with divine destiny, being near her was intoxicating, even from the beginning. Every waking moment he wished for nothing more than to return to her, to feel her chest rise and fall quietly as her head lay on his chest. Two hearts thumping in time to an invisible song that wove the very fabric of the universe around them, he saw every seam and it was a god’s curse that even if he had let himself forget his mission eventually there would be a time that she would go where he could not follow.

His Lavellan had foolishly thought it was him leaving her behind but with every time he awoke he could sense the world growing older and he knew that the time was drawing closer.

/

She did not search for him like she had when he had first vanished but wherever her crusade led her he had been. The Dalish clans with the Keepers, suspicious of the one they call Inquisitor with the Dalish roots but a bare face or the crumbling altars in the Exalted Plains dedicated to Elvhen gods and rituals so old that not even the oldest of the People could remember. The Clans were dying, the sentinels were leaving the forest to preserve what shred of culture they had left and this was where she would always find remnants of him. Places where the grass had grown bent under his body from the way he slept, head cradled by a pillar that was already half dust.

She taught her People what he had taught her, discussions held quietly between the two of them, the way he had spoken suggested he hadn’t expected her to remember them but she could perfectly recall every line of that musical inflection. She told them the truth of Fen’Harel and they had hurled insults, the Keepers had told her that she had truly shamed her Clan if she was so quick to forget the destruction that trickster had reigned. Lavellan had taken the Elvhen children in Skyhold close to her breast and told them the tales of their People, the truth of the Vallaslin and the old magics that still lurked deep within the earth. They drank it in with accepting faces and trust in their eyes, blissfully unaware that their world was splintering around them.

\

The first prayer to Fen'Harel in too many ages to count was a Dalish boy on the outskirts of his camp. Solas remembered hearing the voice perfectly in his head, and being disoriented by it until he remembered. He had forgotten what it felt like to have mortals seeking him for blessings and the call for assistance felt alien.

He did not appear to the youth until after his eyes had drooped closed, he couldn’t have seen more than twenty summers in his life but his face was freckled and free of the wretched slave markings he had grown to loathe so much. A classic example of Dalish ignorance that they would cling so tightly onto mangling their own faces without full knowledge of what they meant.

The echo from the Fade of the surrounding area was corrupted somehow, he was sure of it. A fair distance from the camp lurked the stone sculpture of the Dread Wolf, no longer the monstrous sculptures these people usually depicted him as but instead a much softer statuette had replaced it, that of a dignified wolf facing the camp. No longer a warning, but a sentinel, protecting his people. The boy had fallen at his feet and through trembling lips answered his questions about the Dread Wolf figure and how the Herald with the naked skin had come to them, patient and wise to explain and pass on information of the old ways. There had not been a child with the Vallaslin for years.

Solas walked along the worn paths of the nomads, tracing routes out of the constellations that had shined upon this world long before the Dread Wolf had stalked these lands. Smelling the sweet unfurling of spring he turned his head to the distant campfires, he hadn’t remembered seeing such a strong Clan since the last time he had left the Fade. So busy with his own mission he had forgotten to look upon those he was risking everything to help. It would seem even though he was not near Lavellan she was still helping.

Before leaving this mortal plane he did not miss the solitary altar to Fen’Harel with a very familiar jawbone dangling from the fearsome stone teeth of a wolf. 


End file.
